The Pulse of a Heart
by Dart'myr Blackwood
Summary: Just a simple story, chapters will include Summaries.
1. Prologue

In, out. In, out. Focusing on my breaths, my finger met the cool, hard trigger. In my vision, a aqua-marine circle flickered into sight, expanding, contracting, then exploding outward once again. I counted in my head, to ascertain the timing. There. There. It coincided with my heartbeat, at its smallest between "ga-dumps."

Nudging the weighty black barrel that stretched out in front of me, the lens in front of my face blurred as the view shifted, and my.eye throbbed faintly as it rapidly un- and re- focused on my target. Two sillouettes, walking side by side. A quick eye calculation told me they were 7 meters apart, offset, from my current vantage, by 30-45 degrees.

A quick glance up at the corner of my vision brought the numbers there into focus, confirming the windspeed and direction. Everything's set.

Having not moved my eye from the scope, it was a simple matter to return my quarry to my field of vision within the convex glass, and took a deep breath. Easy. This was easy.

One heartbeat. Two. Three. I counted off in my head, getting the rhythm, and synced in my mind. I could count my heartbeats as they happened, preemptively. More importantly, I could count the spaces between them; precicely when the Bullet Circle would be its smallest. Five. Six-go!

**Fwooom!** The gun responded to my trigger finger, and a massive bullet sailed forth. A small, ever expanding ball formed around the muzzle break, spurred on by the compressed air as it danced its joy of release.

The true fruit of its labor, however, was still in the air, spinning rapidly as it drilled through the air. Over half an inch wide. It was the 14.5mm rounds this gun could fire, that were so devastating. In truth, if one were to use this in reality, at this close a range, it'd incur the ire of international law.

My well trained hand was already sliding the bolt back into place as the thought crossed my mind, the heartbeat still in my mind.

_Ga-thump-_-

**Fwooom!**

It was a moment after the second shot left the weapon that my eyes registered the splash of red polygons from my first target's body. His partner turned, eyes widening-


	2. Chapter 1: Mr Pervs

I raised a hand to the window that hovered before me, at about waist height. A dainty looking hand, clad in a simple white leather glove, followed my movements, and I averted my eyes, my head following suit a moment after.

If the trader I was dealing with noticed my discomfort, he didn't show it. Though I suppose it was only natural. After all, it wasn't a real person, but an NPC, a Non Player Character, controlled by the extensive system that gave birth to this world of polygons.

The window made a small _chi-__ing!_ sound, like a bell being rung twice in quick succession, and collapsed inward from top to bottom, vanishing into its contracting upper and lower bounds. The NPC bowed, and said in a somewhat mechanical voice,

"Thank you! It was a pleasure doing business!"

Though the clerk, a thin looking youth, wouldn't react, I gave the NPC a resolute nod anyway, just as I would in the real world if somebody thanked me.

That afternoon, I was, all things considered, in a good mood. That is, until I turned around at that moment. My eyes, aching a bit as they readjusted to the distance difference of the tip of my nose and those grey green eyes, narrowed slightly, but I hesitated. He was between me and the exit, and I'm sure he would try something if I tried to push past.

I internally groaned, and he took the slight pause in my actions to walk forward, grinning like an idiot. In fact, he was an idiot.

"Heyyyyyy, baby! Why the sour look, huh? Did the NPC shopkeeper con a sexy thing like you, hmmm?~"

I watches his eyes the whole time he spoke, and they barely strayed from the jacket around my chest, or more accurately, the somewhat shapely curve beneath.

This disgusting cretin... I felt heat rising to my cheeks in anger, but when his shameless eyes met my own, I saw him misconstruing it as-

No, I suddenly realized. Not in spite of. Because of. My disdain for this individual increased exponentially.

"Heeyy, Ten-chi!~ Why don't you talk to me?"

Ten-chi. It was a pun on my username, which was itself a pun that nobody got. 《Tenshiodenki》, which most people saw as "Tenshi o denki" or roughly "Electricity Angel." This was intentional, but the first part was "Tenshio," a localized version of the Latin word "Tensio," or tension. Therefore, my name meant "Electrical Tension." Voltage. The driving pressure of electricity.

"I avoid speaking to idiots," I said icily as he circled me, almost like a predator. I stayed still, hoping for an opportunity. I couldn't flee now, or he'd know just how much he got to me, and even then, he could just chase me.

"Oh ho ho, the kitty has claaaaws, hmm?~" I felt a small pressure on my back, right where it curved inward, in the shape of a perverted palm. Despite the unwanted physical contact, no message popped up asking if I was being sexually harassed.

It always irked me how this imbecile, of all people, seemed to have somehow figured out how to bypass the misconduct measures, and freely abused it. I'd had more than my share of his hands all over my body. It made me utterly seethe with rage and hatred.

The system for expression of emotions was always slightly exaggerated. Voices could literally become louder than would be possible when shouting, tears flowed more freely, and my face reddened much more easily than in reality, especially when angered.

As such, as I felt such an overwhelming hostility to that hand that slowly slid down my spine, clearly crossing the line from my jacked to the short combat skirt, I felt my face reddening as I could only sit there in a helpless rage, which angered me further. It was a stupid stupid stupid system that just got this degenerate going even more.

"Ahh, your face... Such a lovely expression... I wonder what it'd look like if I-"

That was the line. The intense emotions I felt suddenly reached critical mass and collapsed inward like a dying star. Hot rage turned cold, and suddenly became a weapon to use. My face blanched as the right hand that was by my side moved suddenly, clamping onto his wrist, stopping a single finger from moving further down my leg.

Turning and twisting the limb in my grip didn't yield the same results as in real life. Normally, such a maneuver would leave the victim in pain, as their arm is uncomfortably twisted and pulled across the body. It was a basic self defense move my father had taught me.

Or rather, it was half.

The motion was complete as my left hand lashed out just as quick, hitting the outside of his elbow. The joint dislocated with a sickening "pop!" sound.

SBC Glokken was the name of the ruined battleship shell that became the eventual basis for the hub of this barren land, at least lore-wise. In truth, the ship was here from the start, the design made by the American company who ran the servers off the Seed Package. As such, there was a so called "safe zone" in which PvP, or any kind of HP decrease, was impossible.

That, coupled with the inability of the Amusphere to produce excruciating pain, meant that even as the aggressor screamed out, rather girlishly, it was less out of pain and more of shock that his arm was bending past the 180 degree extension it was biologically meant to.

"AAAHHHHH! M-MY ARM!!"

I let go of his wrist, and he backed away, cradling the limb gingerly. More sickening crunch sounds reached my ears as the safe zone restored the damage to his avatar, and the only thing that kept me from gagging was the cold, tight knot in my chest. I turned back toward the door and strode out, holding my head high.

Exiting the NPC run store, I quickly jumped over the nearby railing. There was a faint whistling noise in my ears as I picked up speed in freefall.

Two and a half weeks ago, I had screen captured a single bullet falling from what the game said was 20 meters. Using frame by frame measurements, I ascertained that gravity in this world was a little less than it's real world counterpart. Perhaps due wanting to give players enhanced mobility, gravity was closer to 8.47 meters per second per second.

Learning that fact let me leap rather fearlessly over a jump like this, to the main street 27 meters below. It took me about 2 and a half seconds to land, barely two tenths of a second slower than real life.

Of course, at this distance, the difference was barely noticeable. I simply enjoyed finding small facts like that. But it did come with a significant advantage.

As I landed lithely, bending my knees slightly to absorb the impact, I took off in a run down the street. As an AGI build, this dash would be less of a sprint and more of a light jog, but I had put 0 points into AGI, meaning the base stat of 1 gave no run speed bonus.

My feet skidded as I dug them in, suddenly subverting my forward momentum while driving myself to the right, twisting my hips to realign as I ran perpendicular to my original path.

I'm not sure for how long I ran like that, but I ended up at the Aft Deck, a large expanse in the back of the city where most shady player trades took place. As my feet slowed to a jog, then a trot, I looked around, recognizing the surroundings. Hidden in the shadows of three old, massive guns on the deck, the area I stumbled into was a common hideout for various players, but today it was empty. The large guns, round like mushroom caps, had since fallen into disrepair, victimized by the harsh wasteland.

In other words, it was designed like that. The rusted metal wasn't destroyable, despite how weak it was, and if one tried, they'd meet a purple window displaying "Immortal Object." But I didn't need to destroy anything.

There was a small maintenance hatch on the underside of each of the cannons, with a small crawlspace for a mechanic to slide inward along two rails. Of course, the rails lacked a platform to support, but I'd managed to use my 《Item Crafting》 skill to create a rough replacement.

Despite my use for it, the system didn't recognize it as a useful object, and so classified it as salvage, to be broken down for materials.

Pinching my fingers and swiping downward with my hand, as if making a stroke with a pencil, let out a clear peal. A floating GUI materialized from a space of nothingness, a series of circles that represented various subgroups of the menu. I tapped the one with a small humanoid silhouette, and it _bink_!-ed in response, displaying my basic character page. Another set of motions selected the symbol for "inventory," and sorted the list based on object type. A flick of my wrist sent it scrolling downward, towards the "salvage" section.

_Plink! Pink! Bu-dink!_ The system closed, and red polygonal shapes formed the plate of wood with metal rails attached below, and it dropped into my waiting hands.

I knealt down and slid the plate into place, then laid on it on my stomach. Using my arms, I grasped the rail ahead of me and slid into the shaft. All in all, the maneuver looked quite ridiculous.

As I pulled myself in, the space around me abruptly opened into a comparatively much larger, circular room. The ceiling was easily tall enough for two of me stacked, and almost twice that in radius. A variety of screens lined the walls, with 3 panels taking up equal portions of 3/4 of the room.

I assumed the room was for calibration and manual targeting of the photon cannon, but since the inhabitants were long gone, nobody was around who could answer my questions.

I couldn't help but grin slightly as I raised myself off the plate, stowing it in a called forth inventory screen. This area was my private space, and it was special to me.

Sitting on one of the already waiting chairs, whose condition I'd judged to be the best, I reopened my menu, selected the character, then selected avatar. The grin faded quickly from my face.

The avatar screen displayed detailed information about a persons body in this world. It listed information like height, weight, and... measurements.

I assumed that those measurements, which could be further called into detail, were used for players who made custom clothing. I'd never done anything but glare at them.

"36E... 29... 37..." I let out a disgusted growl and swept the window away.

It was no wonder why I had so many issues with men in this game. _36E! E! My real body measures to 36 total!_

When I first logged in, I had set my character height to my own, 5 foot 7 inches. However, GGO only used that as a guide. In actuality, the avatar of a player is somewhat randomized, including bodily figure. People could end up gangly like children, or tall and buff, or...

I angrily called up the avatar info panel again. 5 foot, 10 inches. I knew exactly where that extra length came from, and it infuriated me to no end. I didn't come to VR to have some randomizer tell me I wasn't attractive.

My eyes grew hot as I stared at the numbers, and I hurriedly blinked back tears. The game had become another enemy, taunting me. Pitting people against me. I failed to hold back the tiny droplets that drew lines down my cheeks, and hurriedly wiped them away.

Not that anybody could see me crying, anyway.


End file.
